TRIVIA:
QUOTES:
CHUCKLES/BELLY
LAUGHS & GROANERS
TRIVIA:
July 4th Fun Facts!
On this day in
1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress,
starting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom as a sovereign nation.
As always, this most American of holidays will be marked by parades, fireworks
and backyard barbecues across the country.
Patriotic
Places:
Number of places
nationwide with "liberty" in their name. The most populous one is Liberty,
Missouri (26,232). Iowa has more of these places than any other state:
four (Libertyville, New Liberty, North Liberty and West Liberty).
* Eleven places have "independence" in their name. The most populous of
these is Independence, Missouri, with 113,288 residents.
* Five places adopted the name "freedom." Freedom, California, with 6,000
residents, has the largest population among these.
* There is one place named "patriot" — Patriot, Indiana, with a population
of 202.
* And what could be more fitting than spending the day in a place called
"America"? There are five such places in the country, with the most populous
being American Fork, Utah, with 21,941 residents. http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet
The
Fourth of July Cookout:
As with many holidays,
the 4th of July celebration includes food, drink and the realization of
how fortunate we are as a nation.
More
than 66 million:
Number of Americans
who said they have taken part in a barbecue during the previous year. It's
probably safe to assume a large number of these events took place on the
Fourth.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-32.html
Although we do not
have a fixed menu for the celebration of the Fourth, you can almost count
on traditional favorites such as hamburgers and hot dogs, chicken, ribs,
garden salads, potato salad, chips and watermelon. Following is a summary
of where these foods come from:
* There's a 1-in-6 chance the beef on your backyard grill came from Texas.
The Lone Star
State was the leader in the production of cattle and calves, accounting
for 7.2 billion
pounds of the nation's total production of 42.2 billion pounds last year.
* There's a 1-in-4 chance your hot dogs and ribs originated in Iowa. The
Hawkeye State had a
total inventory of 14.9 million hogs and pigs as of March 1, 2003 — about
one-fourth of
the nation's total.
* The chicken on your barbecue grill probably came from one of the top
broiler-producing
states: Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina and Mississippi. The
value of
production in each of these states exceeded $1 billion in 2002. These states
combined for
well over half of the nation's broiler production.
* The lettuce in your salad or on your hamburger probably was grown in
California, which
accounted for nearly three-quarters of lettuce production in 2002.
* The fresh tomatoes in your salad most likely came from Florida or California,
which,
combined, produced more than two-thirds of U.S. tomatoes in 2002. The ketchup
on
your hamburger or hot dog probably came from California, which accounted
for 95
percent of processed tomato production last year.
* There's a 1-in-3 chance the beans in your side dish of baked beans or
pork and beans came
from North Dakota, which produced more than one-third of the dry, edible
beans in 2002.
* As to potato salad or potato chips or fries, Idaho and Washington produced
about one-half
of the nation's spuds in 2002.
* For dessert, six states — California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Arizona
and Indiana —
combined to produce about 80 percent of watermelons last year.
http://www.usda.gov/nass/
Fireworks
& Fourth of July Events:
$128.8 million
The value of fireworks
imported from China, representing the bulk of all U.S. fireworks imports
($135.6 million) in 2002. U.S. exports of fireworks, by comparison, amounted
to $13.5 million, with Germany purchasing more than any other single country
($5.0 million). http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/
Imports
of U.S. Flags:
$7.9 million
The dollar value
of U.S. imports of American flags in 2002; more than half of this amount
($5.2 million) was for U.S. flags made in China. This was down from the
2001 dollar value of U.S. flag imports ($51.7 million), but still considerably
higher than the total for 2000 ($747,800). That was the last full year
prior to Sept. 11. http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/
$646,452
Dollar value of
exports of U.S. flags in 2002. Japan was the leading customer, purchasing
$86,189 worth. http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/
125,000
Number of U.S.
flags flown over the U.S. Capitol last year at the request of House and
Senate members. On July 4 alone, 1,200 were flown at our nation's capitol.
(From the U.S. Capitol Flag Room.)
$272 million
Annual dollar value
of shipments of fabricated flags, banners and similar emblems by the nation's
manufacturers, according to the latest economic census (1997) for which
there is published data. http://www.census.gov/prod/ec97/97m3149e.pdf
Coming
to America: This subject is a bit touchy in 2007
32.5 million
The number of foreign-born
residents in the United States in 2002; they accounted for 11.5 percent
of the nation's total population. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-42.html
* More than 1-in-3 foreign-born residents were naturalized U.S. citizens.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-42.html
* Six states had estimated foreign-born populations of 1 million or more:
California
(8.8 million), New York (3.6 million), Florida (2.8 million), Texas (2.4
million), New Jersey
(1.2 million) and Illinois (1.2 million).
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/cb02-18.html
* Among the foreign-born population, 52 percent were born in Latin America,
26 percent in
Asia,14 percent in Europe and the remaining 8 percent in other
regions of the world,
such as Africa and Oceania. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-42.html
State
Park Lakes & Beaches
66 million
Number of visits
in a recent year to our national parks — a particularly scenic locale for
a July 4th picnic. There were 766 million visits in a recent year to another
popular picnic venue — state parks or recreation areas. Those in California
(80 million), Ohio (59 million), New York (56 million), Washington (48
million) and Illinois (44 million) recorded the highest number of visits.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-32.html
You may or may not
be able to picnic there, but a visit to a national historical site is a
particularly fitting way to celebrate our nation's heritage on its 227th
birthday. In a recent year, about 72 million people flocked to national
historical sites and 24 million to national monuments.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-32.html
The
British are Coming!
"The British are
coming! The British are coming!" These days, this cry applies to tourists
rather than "redcoats." Nearly 5 million tourists from the United Kingdom
visited the United States in a recent year, more than from any other country
except Japan.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-32.html
$74 billion
Dollar volume of
trade last year between the United States and the United Kingdom, making
the U.K., our adversary in 1776, our sixth-leading trading partner today.
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/
Source: U.S. Census
Bureau
QUOTES:
Those who expect
to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of
supporting it.
~Thomas Paine
He that would make
his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for
if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
~Thomas Paine
This nation will
remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.
~Elmer Davis
The American Revolution
was a beginning, not a consummation.
~Woodrow Wilson
Liberty is always
dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
~Harry Emerson
Fosdick
Let freedom never
perish in your hands.
~Joseph Addison
You have to love
a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade
of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength
and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato
salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think
you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.
~Erma Bombeck
Freedom has its
life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily
earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots,
it will wither and die.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the truest sense,
freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
~Franklin D. Roosevelt
A statistician made
a few calculations and discovered that since the birth of our nation more
lives had been lost in celebrating independence than in winning it.
~Curtis Billings
This, then, is the
state of the union: free and restless, growing and full of hope.
So it was in the beginning. So it shall always be, while God is willing,
and we are strong enough to keep the faith. ~Lyndon B. Johnson
For what avail the
plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Those who won our
independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage
to be the secret of liberty.
~Louis D. Brandeis
Freedom is nothing
but a chance to be better.
~Albert Camus
It is easy to take
liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.
~Dick Cheney
Liberty is the breath
of life to nations.
~George Bernard
Shaw
America is much
more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact -
the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize
freedom, responsible government, and human equality. ~Adlai Stevenson
May the sun in his
course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our
own country! ~Daniel Webster
We on this continent
should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil
for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.
~Robert J. McCracken
If our country is
worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living
for in
time of peace.
~Hamilton Fish
I prefer liberty
with danger to peace with slavery.
~Author Unknown
Without freedom,
no one really has a name.
~Milton Acorda
All we have of freedom,
all we use or know -
This our fathers
bought for us long and long ago.
~Rudyard Kipling,
The Old Issue, 1899
Where liberty dwells,
there is my country.
~Benjamin Franklin
Liberty means responsibility.
That is why most men dread it.
~George Bernard
Shaw, Man and Superman, "Maxims: Liberty and Equality," 1905
It is the love of
country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism.
~J. Horace McFarland
The winds that blow
through the wide sky in these mounts, the winds that sweep from Canada
to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic - have always blown on free
men.
~Franklin D. Roosevelt
I wish that every
human life might be pure transparent freedom.
~Simone de Beauvoir
The United States
is the only country with a known birthday.
~James G. Blaine
Many politicians
are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no
people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The
maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into
the water till he had learned to swim.
~Thomas Macaulay
Then join hand in
hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand,
by dividing we fall.
~John Dickinson
We must be free
not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
~William Faulkner
My God! How
little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession
of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!
~Thomas Jefferson
What is the essence
of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance
between freedom "to" and freedom "from."
~Marilyn vos Savant,
in Parade
How often we fail
to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more
than a
lack of tragedy.
~Paul Sweeney
We need an America
with the wisdom of experience. But we must not let America grow old
in spirit. ~Hubert H. Humphrey
Those who deny freedom
to others deserve it not for themselves.
~Abraham Lincoln
Freedom is the oxygen
of the soul.
~Moshe Dayan
It is sweet to serve
one's country by deeds, and it is not absurd to serve her by words.
~Sallust
Freedom is not enough.
~Lyndon B. Johnson
We are free, truly
free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able
to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.
~Ricardo Flores
Magon, speech, 31 May 1914
There is nothing
wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
~William J. Clinton
Freedom is never
free.
~Author Unknown